Eratosthenes first measured the circumference of the earth from the shadows cast by the sun. Today, humanity's fitness to survive will be measured by our ability to conquer that same thermonuclear fusion that casts those shadows. Thus, Prometheus will truly be unbound.

"The mind is a compact, multiply connected thought mass with internal connections of the most intimate kind. It grows continuously as new thought masses enter it, and this is the means by which it continues to develop."

Bernhard Riemann On Psychology and Metaphysics ca. 1860

Today's Elites

Friday, December 16, 2011

Roasting the London Economist's Chestnuts

Today, the London Economist sententiously opines on Christianity and America, except they have left something out. I hereby charitably reprove them:

Alexander Hamilton before being killed by Burr had proposed to outflank the venal Burr's takeover of the Federalist party by founding a Christian Constitutional Society. Now, the sort of Christianity that Hamilton would have supported can be best gleaned from his stark attack on Adam Smith's doctrine of free trade in his Report on Manufactures. The recognition that the City of London's (and Wall Street's) East Indies Company's practices were (and are, still today) the true successors of that evil Roman Empire that ordered Jesus' crucifixion, is the true lesson in anything decent, whether nominally Christian or otherwise, which has arisen on these shores from the time of the Massachusetts Bay Charter. The object of all men of good faith must be to eradicate the modern day Leviathan of "global governance" and return to the principle of a harmony of sovereign nations that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had envisaged when he admonished Churchill that the U.S. would no longer tolerate the rot of British Empire's colonial methods.

2 comments:

I'm going to ignore the implication that a company with equity in it's capital structure (or may be you're referring to the fact that it was a multinational corporation) is inherently evil. Unless of course you're talking about the ability of these early MNCs to profit unfairly from rent seeking behavior, in which case we're not talking about the free trade that Adam Smith advocated.

Instead, I'd like to point out that is completely ridiculous to mention FDR as an example par excellence of how to govern/maintain rule of law from a more local and/or bottom-up perspective. He pushed through most of the New Deal by using executive orders, which is about as top-down as you can get.

I don't know how you surmised that I was extolling FDR as a model of "bottom up perspective" (unless you mean the end of prohibition.) Hamilton was a dirigist and actively promoted the development of projects to do public good. This was in keeping with Cotton Mather's acknowledged influence on Benjamin Franklin creation of the principle heralded in the preamble of the Constitution of the United States, i.e. that the purpose of the government must promote the general welfare. This principle is what Smith explicitly attacked in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, where he claims that mankind can only operate on the basis of mere passions without any foresight as to the future well being of society at large. This "moral relativism" of the East Indies Company is expressed for example in the virtual enslavement of China via the opium trade. Whatever the market will bear, eh what?

A NIGHT-PIECE ON DEATH

By the blue taper's trembling light,

No more I waste the wakeful night,Intent with endless view to poreThe schoolmen and the sages o'er:Their books from wisdom widely stray,Or point at best the longest way.I'll seek a readier path, and goWhere wisdom's surely taught below.

How deep yon azure dyes the sky,Where orbs of gold unnumber'd lie,While through their ranks in silver prideThe nether crescent seems to glide!The slumbering breeze forgets to breathe,The lake is smooth and clear beneath,Where once again the spangled showDescends to meet our eyes below.The grounds which on the right aspire,In dimness from the view retire:The left presents a place of graves,Whose wall the silent water laves.That steeple guides thy doubtful sight,Among the livid gleams of night.There pass, with melancholy state,By all the solemn heaps of fate,And think, as softly-sad you treadAbove the venerable dead,'Time was, like thee they life possess'd,And time shall be, that thou shalt rest.'

Those graves, with bending osier bound,That nameless heave the crumbled ground,Quick to the glancing thought discloseWhere Toil and Poverty repose.

The flat smooth stones that bear a name,The chisel's slender help to fame,Which, e'er our set of friends decay,Their frequent steps may wear away,A middle race of mortals own,Men half-ambitious, all unknown.

The marble tombs that rise on high,Whose dead in vaulted arches lie,Whose pillars swell with sculptured stones,Arms, angels, epitaphs, and bones;--These (all the poor remains of state)Adorn the rich, or praise the great;Who while on earth in fame they live,Are senseless of the fame they give.

Ha! while I gaze, pale Cynthia fades,The bursting earth unveils the shades!All slow, and wan, and wrapp'd with shrouds,They rise in visionary crowds,And all with sober accent cry,'Think, mortal, what it is to die!'

Now from yon black and funeral yew,That bathes the charnal-house with dew,Methinks I hear a voice begin;(Ye ravens, cease your croaking din,Ye tolling clocks, no time resoundO'er the long lake and midnight ground!)It sends a peal of hollow groans,Thus speaking from among the bones:

'When men my scythe and darts supply,How great a king of fears am I!They view me like the last of things:They make, and then they dread, my stings.Fools! if you less provoked your fears,No more my spectre-form appears.Death's but a path that must be trod,If man would ever pass to God:A port of calms, a state of easeFrom the rough rage of swelling seas.

Nor can the parted body know,Nor wants the soul these forms of woe:As men who long in prison dwell,With lamps that glimmer round the cell,Whene'er their suffering years are run,Spring forth to greet the glittering sun:Such joy, though far transcending sense,Have pious souls at parting hence.On earth, and in the body placed,A few, and evil years, they waste:But when their chains are cast aside,See the glad scene unfolding wide,Clap the glad wing and tower away,And mingle with the blaze of day!'

Thomas Parnell

For Annie

Thank Heaven! the crisis-The danger is past,And the lingering illnessIs over at last-And the fever called "Living"Is conquered at last.

Sadly, I knowI am shorn of my strength,And no muscle I moveAs I lie at full length-But no matter!-I feelI am better at length.

And I rest so composedly,Now, in my bedThat any beholderMight fancy me dead-Might start at beholding me,Thinking me dead.

For now, while so quietlyLying, it fanciesA holier odorAbout it, of pansies-A rosemary odor,Commingled with pansies-With rue and the beautifulPuritan pansies.

And so it lies happily,Bathing in manyA dream of the truthAnd the beauty of Annie-Drowned in a bathOf the tresses of Annie.

She tenderly kissed me,She fondly caressed,And then I fell gentlyTo sleep on her breast-Deeply to sleepFrom the heaven of her breast.

When the light was extinguished,She covered me warm,And she prayed to the angelsTo keep me from harm-To the queen of the angelsTo shield me from harm.

And I lie so composedly,Now, in my bed,(Knowing her love)That you fancy me dead-And I rest so contentedly,Now, in my bed,(With her love at my breast)That you fancy me dead-That you shudder to look at me,Thinking me dead.

But my heart it is brighterThan all of the manyStars in the sky,For it sparkles with Annie-It glows with the lightOf the love of my Annie-With the thought of the lightOf the eyes of my Annie.

Edgar Allan Poe

ODE TO THE WEST WIND.

This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions.

The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympathises with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently influenced by the winds which announce it.